A venue that will take 25% off the top of any dealer's sales? How much profit off of material do you think dealers even make? Oh but free tables? But they'll still have to buy prohibatively expensive sleeping arrangements. You will NOT have any dealers, flat out.

Not only that, but you have no venue or even a cruise line announced and you want people to basicly LOAN YOU up to $800 with no guarintee that they get the trip they pay for and they'll just have to trust you to pay you back after you cancel it due to lack of interests. You are looking to raise almost $400 000 in registrations in order to get this off the ground. No first year con, even in the LARGEST possible city, would ever generate that much in registrations. Your costs are extreamly high and will dramaticaly limit attendance.

$381 is the lowest possible cost is absurd. Then there will be added cost to the attendees to even travel to the launch point, expenses at the 'con' would increase that.

You're fucked. The only good that could possibly come from this is that you will fail so hard that anyone else who has ever run a failed con will feel better in comparison to you.

Hey now, no need to be that negative. It's America, and indeed there's plenty of people as rich as they are hardcore to take up something like this. And even assuming relatively high costs, I'd say a lot of con attendees already spend rather solid sums on their con trips. So I wouldn't rule it out. That said, (pardon the pun) floating this one would be tricky.

The Birds are using humanity in order to throw something terrifying at this green pig. And then what happens to us all later, that’s simply not important to them…

I responded to this over on the Tekko forums you spammed it at, but I'm going to assume you aren't going to go back to read responses there...

To me, someone who has been shopping for a cruise next year, this seems like total price gouging >.> I can travel to the Bahamas on the same date for the same number of days with a guaranteed ocean view room for two for about half the price with Carnival.

There's just soo much wrong with this that I (and many other seasoned convention organizers) can see. What stands out the most is how you expect people to give you this much money with all the details "to come". I didn't even see a list of room amenities or at the very least, details of the cruise ship you will be chartering. You shouldn't be taking money until you can give the buyers this info. Anyone giving you money at this point is an idiot.

It looks to an educated outsider to be either like a really half-baked idea that's going to fizzle or a complete scam.

I'm not implying that having an anime-themed event on a cruise ship can't happen or wouldn't be awesome and your heart is in the right place, but the way you're doing it is so clearly not the way to go.

But it's not like you're going to listen to anyone anyway since you're hiding behind the ignorance of enthusiasm. You'll get a few people stupid enough to be sold on the idea alone to send you money that you'll end up having to refund because your ideas were bigger than your abilities.

Adv1sor wrote:Specific details about the ship can not be released until early next year. (Cruise line rule as they said they don't want any calls about this until then.)

Adv1sor wrote:To avoid paypal fees for those who have already paid, in the event of cancellation, I am going to close registration on September 1, 2009. I expect to be sold out by this date anyway. If things aren't looking as good as planned then I will refund all money paid, 100%, and try again next year.

So...you want people to hand you an obscene amount of money for a not-a-cruise-but-on-a-cruise-ship by a certain date before they even know what event is going to be exactly? What happens to those people who were stupid enough to pay at the time who see the details after you get them and go "This sucks, I want my money back." You're going to make them pay the fees because they woke up and realized this is a bad idea?Hey guyz, give me funds for what already sounds like a less-than-stellar idea, the details of which I will tell you AFTER I have pocketed your money. Oh btw, check or money orders are preferred.

Yeah...doesn't sound shady AT ALL. But it's okay guyz, his paypal has been verified! Isn't that impressive?! Totally trustworthy!

There's only so far community support and trust can go, and you are waaaaay beyond that in assuming you can fill a freaking BOAT on this tripe your feeding everyone. It's not the otaku that have money to burn you're aiming at, it's retards that will get behind anything that has the chance of letting them revel in their fandom in new and interesting ways. Your niche market is the stupid otaku with money to burn.

What does it truly mean to be otaku? Apparently you have to be batshit loco or just dumb to boot. I'd like to think higher of the general populace of our fandom, especially the ones who have proven themselves to earn enough money to blow on stuff like this and that's why the proverbial boat is going to sink.

I really hate it when people with stupid conventions pull this well meaning bullshit about 'Oh we're trying something new and you shouldn't oppose that!'.

Well intentioned stupidity is still stupidity, no matter how you dress it up.

Even if you mean well, this is a stupid idea and all the good intentions and will wishing can't fix those flaws. You've made it clear that you have no intention of addressing the flaws but would rather gloss over them. You are expecting to throw an EXPENSIVE con, put it in an expensive venue, to sell out (Effectively pre-reg) 2,488 people for a first year convention, at a total income of over $400 000 to pay for the event. The attendance costs of going to this con are WELL over what the average person will spend going to a regular con.